Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

"World of hurt" is one of the idiomatic expressions that gained
currency among troops in Vietnam.

When a grunt screamed "Medic!," blood spurting from a
perforation in his anatomy, he was in a world of hurt. When he
collected the bodies of slain comrades, when he learned that the
blackened body in the body bag was that of his best friend, he was
in a world of hurt. When he got the letter telling him that his girl
had gone, that she didn't care if he ever came home, he was in a
world of hurt.

For troops in Vietnam, spiritual desolition and emotional despair could be as scarring as physical injuries. And for many, their
world of hurt—spiritual, emotional, physical—has lingered long
after their return to "the World "

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